 |
FAMSI © 2008: Eduardo J. Pérez de Heredia Puente |
|
Chen K’u: The Ceramic of the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá Previous Studies of the Ceramics from the Cenote Two small collections from the ceramic obtained by Thompson (which add up to 322 sherds) were studied by Vaillant in 1926, and further analyzed by G. Brainerd (1958), who presented a table of percentages by type, which he compared with the collections of the southeast colonnade (Brainerd, 1958: 44-45) (Figure 14). He found that the ceramic from the Cenote corresponded mainly to the Florescent periods – Early Mexican, and Late Mexican. Traditionally, the Florescent period or Terminal Classic period is characterized by the boom of the Puuc cities, and would be dated between 800 and 1000 CE. It is followed by the Early Mexican period or Early Postclassic period, characterized by the boom of the "Toltec" Chichén Itzá, dating probably from 1000 to 1200 of our era. The Middle Postclassic or Middle Mexican period, dated between 1200 and 1300 CE and would correspond to the boom of Mayapán; and finally, the Late Mexican or Late Postclassic period would extend from the fall of Mayapán to the arrival of the Spaniards, including the flourishing of settlements in the Eastern Coast, such as Tulúm. According to Brainerd, the preponderance of jars and bowls would suggest a primordial use of the Cenote as a water source. He highlights the absence of unslipped incense burners from the Florescent and Early Mexican periods. The Coarse Slate ware (or Peto Cream of the Middle Postclassic in current nomenclature) would be absent, something that could be explained by a depopulation of the city, or the abandonment of the Cenote as a water source during the Late Mexican period. During this final epoch the Cenote was probably used as a place for ceramic offerings. The collection of complete vessels presently at the Peabody Museum was also discussed by Brainerd, and this helped him to reinforce the conclusions expressed above.
The description of the vessels of the Peabody collection has been published once more in the catalog of materials of the Peabody collection (Ball and Ladd, 1992; Coggins, comp.). In this publication, Ball examined the hypothesis that the vessels and other materials recovered owed their presence in the Cenote to its use as a deposit of ceremonial offerings during a unique, extended episode, as opposed to many temporally discrete episodes (Ball, 1982). In his view, the predominance of domestic vessels, the high incidence of broken fragments and the high density and diversity of items that characterized the Florescent ceramic collection strongly denotes refuse contexts (Ball, 1992: 191-193). The apparent functional ceremonial homogeneity and formal redundancy of the late Postclassic ceramic is consistent with the archaeological pattern that would be expected as a result of a temporally discrete episode of repetitive and formal offering rites in the Sacred Cenote. But the ceramic offerings could as well represent a single and synchronic episode of manufacture and deposit. To justify this latter statement, Ball suggests the possibility of a spectacular ritual of termination for the abandonment of Chichén Itzá by the end of the XII century. According to Ball, to chronologically situate the ceramic materials recovered from the Sacred Cenote does not necessarily mean to fix in time the use of the Cenote as a focus of regular ceremonial activities. A post-quem dating for the placement of ceramic is the only fact that has been established. This issue is of considerable significance regarding some disparities which seem to exist between the depositional chronology suggested by the ceramic and the one implied by other types of artifacts.
Ball believes that a ceramic assemblage of one unique phase must suggest at least an overall contemporaneity of manufacture, use, and deposit. And, unless we accept the possibility of rituals where the offering of different materials correlate with different periods of time, such a contemporaneity should be reasonably extended to include other non-ceramic "offerings" that cannot be dated without their contextual association. Unfortunately, the ceramic recovered is not temporally homogeneous but represents instead two different major intervals:
Given the temporal duality of the ceramic collections recovered, another potentially productive line of issues to be studied could be one focused on determining whether a functional homogeneity is expressed in one or both assemblages, particularly regarding what should be considered as ceremonial vessels. The assumption here is that as the result of a repetitive behavior of a uniform type, as may be expected to have unfolded in connection with regular ceremonial activities, a functionally homogeneous assemblage or sub-complex would be more possible than a heterogeneous assemblage (ibid). Of the two temporally discrete groups in which the ceramics from the Cenote could be separated based on typology, the earliest one comprises a mix of decorative vessels and styles with the predominance of water jars and other domestic utilitarian forms. The strongly represented vessels include:
There are present small, although abundant, Silho or X Fine Orange wares, and Thin Slate wares. There are also a handful of functionally ceremonial vessels, or fragments thereof, but I believe that they more probably represent garbage or ritual idiosyncratic acts. In general, the ceramic data strongly suggests that the primary function of the Cenote was water procurement and/or the deposit of refuse, a conclusion advanced in the past by Brainerd (1958: 44-45) on simple statistical bases (see also Tozzer, 1957: 198). The predominance of forms of domestic wares, the high incidence of broken objects and fragments, and the high density and diversity of items that characterize the Florescent ceramic collection are strongly connotative of garbage contexts, and I am unable to find any justification to interpret the Cenote otherwise (Ball, 1992).
The other ceramic assemblage represented among the collections of the Cenote differs in its age and composition from the previous assemblage. Dating from the Middle to the Late Postclassic, the ceramic comprises a large number of Mayapán Unslipped and Mayapán Red wares, the most common among them being the tripod cajetes with red slip and blue painted post-fired cajetes. These are followed in frequency by unslipped vessels of a similar shape. Most tripod vessels contain traces or intact copal balls, while many present inclusions of jadeite or other materials (ibid). The apparent functional ceremonial homogeneity and formal redundancy of the late Postclassic ceramic is consistent with the archaeological pattern that could be expected as a result of a temporally discrete episode of repetitive and formal offering rites at the Sacred Cenote. Once again I concur with Brainerd (1958) in suggesting that such is the case, and in dating at least one episode of formal ceremonial utilization of the Cenote sometime in the Middle to the Late Postclassic period. One final assumption is that these ceramic offerings represent a single and synchronic episode of manufacture and deposit rather than a chronologically complex situation (Ball, 1992).
The ceramic obtained through the explorations conducted by INAH along the 1960’s had never been studied or published until now. Some of those complete vessels were illustrated in publications about these explorations (for example in Ediger, 1971; Piña Chan, 1970; National Geographic, 1962).
In 1998, with funds granted by FAMSI to this author (FAMSI Grant #97061), the fragmented ceramic materials from the bodega at the Centro Regional Yucatán, in Mérida, were analyzed, and the results are described below. |
||
|
Text links to all pages at this site are available at the FAMSI INDEX |
||
